


Leavening

by Yeomanrand



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Awesome Ladies Ficathon, Community: where_no_woman, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who decides where her story begins?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leavening

**Author's Note:**

> beta by [](http://shinychimera.livejournal.com/profile)[**shinychimera**](http://shinychimera.livejournal.com/). From the [Awesome Ladies Ficathon](http://ineffort.livejournal.com/199061.html?thread=5269909#t5269909) prompt: _Star Trek XI, Winona, Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children._ and posted with a different title and in a slightly revised format from how I posted it over there. I don't think anything here will be triggery; spoilers for the movie.

For most people, Winona's story begins and ends with George; tragedy and triumph and an infant born in the nothing in between.

Winona believes her story begins with her earliest memory: barely two years old with her arms wrapped tightly around her mother's leg in a kitchen that smelled of spices she couldn't identify yet and flour and roasting meat and the bright chatter of women she knew were hers. But none of them were the mother who willingly dragged her 12 kilos around the kitchen without complaint, accepting the worship and the weight as her due and her penance. Love in equal measures, and eventually Winona was scooped up into warm arms and held so she could pound at the dough, making slender divots next to the deeper dents her mother's knuckles left behind.

Today, Jim curls on her chest and snuffles and sighs and she wraps her hand around the back of his head; Sam rests against her side, his finger gently nestled in his little brother's palm. She remembers hating her little brother Frank with a passion at first, because at six she hadn't believed anymore in love in equal measures; love was meant to be guarded jealously, and no one should have more access to their mother than she. Perhaps especially not a squalling, red-faced infant who couldn't even _say_ "I love you."

She'd had time to adjust to the George-shaped hole in her life -- adjust, not accept -- while the shuttles limped their way back to Earth; her greatest fear on arrival was that Sam was going to reject Jim more thoroughly than she had rejected Frank; after all, she knew how easily he might decide George's death was Jim's fault.

Her father had tried to explain to her about the baby, stubborn and loving. She trusted her father, but she didn't _believe_ him, especially not when he tried to tell her love was like a pie; there was always enough for everyone. She knew there wasn't, not always, not really. And one afternoon, when Frank was taking a nap and she was feeling brave, she crawled up into her mother's lap and said so.

Her mother had listened, solemnly, gently rubbing a hand up and down Winona's back even when she suddenly burst into tears. Even at six, she'd hated crying and the way her face got all raw, but Mother had never cared.

"Winnie," she'd said, when the tears and the words both ran dry, "I'll tell you a secret."

Winona looked up, curious and expectant, with a sobbing hiccup.

"I hated your Aunt Elizabeth, too." Gentle fingers wiped away Winona's tears, and her mother smiled at the look on her face. "Don't look so surprised, sweetheart. But that's not why your father's wrong."

"It isn't?" Winona was still reeling, a little, because she couldn't imagine her mother and her Aunt Elizabeth ever _disagreeing_ about much of anything, let alone _hating_ each other.

Her mother nodded. "Love isn't a pie, because you're right. Pie runs out, eventually. Love is not a solid. Or a liquid. Or a gas. It's infinite."

"Like space."

"That's right. We carry whole universes in our hearts, little one, and there's always enough to go around."

Winona chewed on her lip, considering the strange image of the insides of their chests being depthless and filled with stars.

Even now, the thought makes her smile; she strokes her hand along Sam's arm and he turns his head to look at her, his narrow chin digging into her ribs.

"What, Momma?" he asks, and she shakes her head.

"Love you, baby," she answers. His nose wrinkles.

"Jimmy's the baby, not me."

"Is that right? I forgot."

Her laughter and Sam's exasperated "Mo-om" startle Jim awake, though he only squeezes Sam's fingers and coos at the two of them. But it's enough to break the quiet moment, because she needs to get up and fix Sam's lunch, and probably change Jim's diaper, and there's a batch of dough rising in the kitchen that needs shallow finger divots and deeper knuckle dents.

For most people, Winona's story starts and ends with George and Jim and the great dark Romulan ship. But Winona creates infinity in herself and her sons from love leavened with pain in unequal measures.

**Author's Note:**

> Winona's Mother's line about what Love Is (...not a solid, etc.) was spoken by one of my friends' children and has been used here with permission.
> 
> Revised version posted on Live Journal at [Where_No_Woman](http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/136950.html), additional comments can be found there.


End file.
